Planet Smashers

[thucom]

Warp codes: 1 PGY,2 GRB,3 YBG,4 BYR,5 RGB,6 YPR,7 GRP

P=purple R=red G=green B=Blue

 

The game is a bit notorious at being boring, but I haven't really found a ton of information on the game itself other than it's slow I couldn't even find someplace that mentioned how many levels it had before. There are 7.

 

So let's see a bit more detail:

 

First point out the gate is there is no auto-fire without any weapon powerups, if you beat this game your thumb is prolly gonna go numb, this extra abuse is not even really called for. An endurance challenge I would not wish upon anyone would be to beat the game without any weapon power ups

 

Second is item drop limitations, there is a maximum weapon level that goes up 2-3 weapon levels on each level. You cannot stay longer in level 1 to get your weapon up to level 6 or so. This means that to get the 4th level weapon(if you count the starter weapon as level 0) you have to make it to level 2, 6th level weapon to level 3 and so on. Also, you can only get 2 parts of the warp code before the halfway point, forcing you to play through half the level before you can get to the boss. If you hit any of these limitations you will see what seem to be empty drops which I think give you points if you pick it up that would have been otherwise a weapon upgrade or warp pill.

 

When you pick up an item from the side of your ship it can be subject to being shot, in later levels this gets to be really annoying with the weapon upgrade that does a continuous stream you can end up exploding whatever you were trying to pick up, or with the warp pills, turning them another random color.

 

There is a worthless lives and earth shield system, it feels like dying at all will basically doom the game, or at at least force you to do the last level or 2 without any extra lives.

 

There are no "invincibility frames" when you get hit to allow you to recover, if you get hit by 6 shots in a row you die, most vertical shooters seem to allow only one hit to die though so it's still a little more forgiving, but makes the shields less useful.

 

Lastly, I beat the game, and it didn't give me time to peel my thumb off the controller and skipped the ending. Boo!

 

To be a little more fair, a couple of reviews I saw mentioned that cloaking against a boss was useless. This is not true. Bosses have 2 shot patterns, one of them fires forward and one at you, if your cloaked it cannot fire at you, just forward.

[Trebor]

The game is a bit notorious at being boring, but I haven't really found a ton of information on the game itself other than it's slow...

 

Two huge factors towards the above:

 

1. Lack of background music during gameplay.

2. Playing the game with the difficulty set to "Easy".

 

Granted, there should have been a 'Normal' or 'Intermediate' difficulty setting; however, choosing between "Easy" or "Hard", if selecting "Easy", one can expect possibly a boring/slow game.

 

Straight from the manual:

 

Still, it is a bit of a letdown especially after one plays through Alien Brigade, in which Planet Smashers is promoted and 'recommended' to play.

 

Regardless, nice play through and thanks for posting it!

[thucom]

 

Two huge factors towards the above:

 

1. Lack of background music during gameplay.

2. Playing the game with the difficulty set to "Easy".

 

Granted, there should have been a 'Normal' or 'Intermediate' difficulty setting; however, choosing between "Easy" or "Hard", if selecting "Easy", one can expect possibly a boring/slow game.

 

Straight from the manual:

PS.PNG

 

Still, it is a bit of a letdown especially after one plays through Alien Brigade, in which Planet Smashers is promoted and 'recommended' to play.

 

Regardless, nice play through and thanks for posting it!

Yeah I don't think I could tolerate random level codes and faster enemies. how did I completely miss that part in the manual? the capsule/pills moving faster might have made it feel better though.

 

The game is just badly paced.... Also, note that I mute the game the whole way.

 

Thats not even mentioning the silly rock parts after each boss, it's like a bottomless pit of dull, the more I think on it, the more dull things pop out.

 

 

BTW: alien brigade is my next target, but I'm experimenting with dual video since staring at a screen with things exploding might be a bit dull. I want there to be some visablility of the light gun motions and stuff. (might not help much but It'll be an experiment toward future other nonsense.......*cough*Oddyssey2boardgames*cough*)

Edited October 2, 2014 by thucom

[+jeremiahjt]

Nice job! If you do any more keep the sound on. It always seems more authentic to me in these videos if the game sound plays.

 

Is this real hardware or emulation? If real hardware what controller did you use? Apologies if this was answered in the video, right now my computer has no sound.

Edited October 2, 2014 by jeremiahjt

[DracIsBack]

I suspect you'll enjoy ALIEN BRIGADE a lot more. I sure did.

 

Agree with the assessments. I learned the cheats to get through the levels quickly.

 

Always thought PLUTOS was this style of game done correctly on the 7800. As it was, I thought Planets Smashers was a big step backwards from Xevious

[thucom]

Nice job! If you do any more keep the sound on. It always seems more authentic to me in these videos if the game sound plays.

 

Is this real hardware or emulation? If real hardware what controller did you use? Apologies if this was answered in the video, right now my computer has no sound.

I always do real hardware(so far anyways), I have a tablet with a screen capture device attached and a Flat tube TV with composite out. I can capture pretty much anything with that.

 

 

At the beginning I let the sound through but mute it since it just a PEW PEW PEW PEW and so on. I'm using one of golden axes NES advantages since all my original controllers keep breaking. I have like 4 now and all of them have at least one direction or button not working all the time.

 

usually opening it up the metal dome for the button in question has shattered, maybe I'm just abusive on the things or something.

Edited October 2, 2014 by thucom